Z. Yang – Chinese Burn Surgery (2015)

Автор: Z. Yang
Название книги: Chinese Burn Surgery
Формат: PDF
Жанр: Пластическая хирургия
Страницы: 489
Качество: Изначально компьютерное, E-book

This is a comprehensive book in burn surgery, written by 25 experts in China. It summarizes the theoretical basis of and clinical experience in the prevention and control of burn injuries. It is a comprehensive and up-to-date reference book for surgeons and scientists working with burn management. The different degree of burns and surgical techniques during burn wound care, reconstruction and healing are reviewed separately. Authors also introduce successful cases in different kinds of burns.

Burn care was not defi ned as a discipline but a branch subject of general surgery in China until
the 1940s. I vividly remember being told categorically by my senior surgeons that death was
inevitable for a patient with a burn injury involving over 30 % of total body surface area
(TBSA) when I was a surgical resident in the 1940s. We did our best to smear the burn wounds
with tannic acid and silver nitrate to prevent the absorption of “burn toxin”; nevertheless, most
patients died of sepsis in a few days. There was only one patient with large burn surface area
who survived. Our knowledge about fl uid replenishment, burn sepsis, and organ failure was
meager at that time.
In 1957, to our great delight, a steel worker sustaining a burn injury covering 78 % TBSA
was successfully cured by experts from the Second Medical College of Shanghai and the
Guang Ci Hospital (renamed Rui Jin Hospital) with close collaborating. This success in
salvaging such a serious burned patient fanned the embers of interest of all the surgeons
nationwide to participate in taking care of burn patients with a renewed confi dence that with
meticulous care and bold innovations in the treatment strategies, patients suffering from
major burns could be saved. Furthermore, after the wounds healed with transplantation of
allogeneic and autologous skin, scar contractures and disfi gurements as resulted from the
injury could be alleviated with rehabilitation treatment and plastic surgery. However, with
rapid advances in burn treatment, it was soon recognized that one should fully grasp the science
of the underlying pathophysiological mechanisms which rendered the unfortunate victims
of burn injury so vulnerable to multiple fatal complications due to faltering homeostasis
and extreme susceptibility to infections. To fulfi ll these demands, institutes devoted to study
basic problems were soon established one after another in medical colleges and large-sized
hospitals, and all of them made signifi cant and valuable contributions to the knowledge covering
basic problems in burn injury and also improvements in burn care. Consequently, a
broadening of the realm of burn care was witnessed, which in turn resulted in a deepening
understanding in burn injury, improvements in the treatment, and lowering of mortality, with
improvement in the quality of victims’ life after recovery of the acute injury. Herein, the
students who are devoting themselves to a burn care profession shouldn’t forget the names
of the predecessors in this fi eld such as Ao Li, Jixiang Shi, Liangnen Wang, Zhiyang Fang,
Changye Wang, etc., who had made such remarkable contributions to science and treatment
strategies in the realm of burn care in this country to raise our standard of burn care to a par
of that of advanced countries. This monograph, as I understand, is a compilation of works of
these mentors and their disciples. The broad scope of the chapters of this monumental work
is refl ected in the concern of basic understanding of the pathological, physiological, biochemical,
and immunological changes produced by a burn injury as well as its technical
therapeutic modalities, complications, sequelae, and rehabilitation. The contents refl ect
fully that the skin, as the largest organ by weight of the body, should not be viewed in isolation.
The idea of fragmentation of the body systems or organs must be abandoned before one is able to address the problems arising in the course of burn care. As a nonagenarian and also
a veteran in burn surgery, I am exceedingly glad to introduce this monograph to all surgeons
who are interested in burn care. My hearty congratulations to all the authors of this valuable
monograph!